self lacked what are usually regarded as
the expected qualifications for the job.
Then again, Gupta is used to exceed-
ing expectations—and periodically
startling old friends with the extent of
his ambition. One friend in particular
is
UBC mathematics professor Nassif
Ghoussoub. Gupta and Ghoussoub had
collaborated on two other national-
scale math projects in the 1990s, with
Ghoussoub as the senior partner and
Gupta the protégé. As one of the found-
ers of Mitacs, Ghoussoub welcomed his
friend's involvement, but was shocked
when Gupta put himself forward as a
candidate to be Mitacs' first
CEO and
scientific director in 2000.
"I thought his application was very
presumptuous," Ghoussoub says. But
Gupta is "relentlessly persuasive" and
he got the job, and he's been bounding
ever since from one presumptuous goal
to the next. "He always surprised me,"
Ghoussoub says. "Arvind would come
in with these initiatives and I would
think, 'That is not achievable in this
lifetime.' And then, in six months, he
would do it."
Gupta moved the still-small manag-
ing office of Mitacs to
SFU from its origi-
nal home in Toronto in 2002, but seven
years later he migrated himself and his
organization to
UBC, in part because
he wanted a bigger platform on which
to build. The move was initiated, or at
least encouraged, by Brad Bennett (son
of former premier Bill Bennett, grand-
son of premier
W.A.C. Bennett and one
of the current provincial government's
most trusted advisers). Then the chair
of the
UBC Board of Governors, Bennett
had met Gupta and heard about what
was happening at Mitacs and went
immediately to then-
UBC president
Stephen Toope. Toope was only too
delighted to scoop a top-notch profes-
sor and to put
UBC's greater resources
at Mitacs' disposal.
"Arvind gets a lot of good things
done," says Bennett, who has since
stepped down from the
UBC board and
assumed the chair at Mitacs. "His big
ideas impressed me." Even more, Ben-
nett says he was impressed by Gupta's
ability to connect with different audi-
ences—"to be a broker between govern-
ment, universities and industry."
38 BCBusiness September 2014 CloCkWiSe from top left: briaN HoWell; iaN SmitH; martiN dee
OLD AND NEW
(Clockwise from top left) UBC's Pon-
derosa Commons, a new student
residence; former UBC president David
Strangway; the Robert H. Lee Alumni
Centre, which opens next spring; and
former UBC presidents Stephen Toope
and Martha Piper.
